Fantastic Four Vol 1 299
** ** ** ** ** Supporting Characters: * * Other Characters: * * * * * * * * * ** Races and Species: * * * * * Locations: * ** *** **** ***** ****** ****** ***** Al's Bar ** * Items: * * | Notes = Continuity Notes * The members of the Fantastic Four all appeared previously in the pages of - when the demon Mephisto terrorized the group as part of a long running scheme to claim the soul of a god. * Johnny asks Ben to be his best man at his wedding. He is going to marry a woman everyone thinks is Alicia Masters. In reality, as revealed in , this is not Alicia but Lyja a Skrull spy sent to spy on the Fantastic Four. She took Alicia's place during the events of . Johnny proposed to "Alicia" in , the couple will get married . * Spider-Man makes his appearance here between the events of where he battles Blaze and where he clashes with the Cygnorians. * Ben's recounting of the Fantastic Four's first battle with the Puppet Master and the first time he met Alicia is taken right from the pages of . Ben and Alicia began dating immediately after in . * This issue is the first time the Fantastic Four's new headquarters, the Four Freedoms Plaza, is named. Their original headquarters the Baxter Building was destroyed by Kristoff Vernard in . The construction of the Four Freedoms Plaza began in and was completed in . * Following their unveiling here, Reed and Sue are next seen in the second story of . In that story they discover that the Watcher recovered all Reed's inventions and other personal possessions moments before Kristoff destroyed the Baxter Building. * On the cover of this issue Spider-Man is depicted wearing his trademark red and blue costume, yet within the story he is wearing a black and white costume. In , Spider-Man used a machine to create the black and white costume after his costume was damaged. Later in , Peter discovered that the "costume" was actually a living creature and had it removed from his body. Since then Peter began alternating between his trademark costume and wearing a fabric version of his black and white costume. It should be clarified that the costume worn here is a cloth replica, not the alien symbiote. At the time of this story the symbiote was seemingly slain in . * Ben goes through a substantial chunk of his recent history leading up to this moment. Some moments he is detailed about, others he glosses over. Here are some points: ** What he omits off the top is that in Reed had realized that Ben could change back and forth between his human and Thing forms at will but his belief that his girlfriend Alicia Masters only loved him at the Thing. Reed kept this a secret. ** He then goes on to talk about how Alicia was brutally tortured by Annihilus. This happened in - . ** Alicia's recovery in the hospital and Ben's doubts about their relationship, including Alicia's insistence they get married was covered in the - . Just prior to when most of the Fantastic Four were among those kidnapped by the Beyonder to battle in the first Secret Wars on Battleworld. ** Ben discovered he could change back and forth and believe it was because of Battleworld itself. In Ben's recollection of his ability to do so is when he battled the Absorbing Man in . That was the second time he shifted into human form during that event, the first time being in . ** Thinking that it was Battleworld that allowed the Thing to change form, he decided to stay there in . ** Ben remained in Battleworld between - where he eventually lost his ability to change back into Ben Grimm and returned to Earth. ** When he arrived in he discovered that Johnny was now in a relationship with "Alicia". ** Finally in the truth of what Reed had known came out and the Thing quit the Fantastic Four. He began wandering the country since that story. ** Ben joined the UCWF in and remained with the organization until of that series. He glosses over the fact that he met and fell involve with a woman named Sharon Venture and was in the process of uncovering the Power Broker's hold over the drug addicted super-human wrestlers. ** In , Ben was injected with a virus that caused him to mutate into an even more hideous form, he fled hospitalization. Again he glosses over the fact that this was done to him by the Power Broker. ** He ended up joining the Mole Man's society in where he was cured of his condition but still held a grudge against Reed and the Fantastic Four for everything that happened to him. Despite this he grudgingly rejoined the team. Publication Notes * This issue contains a letters page, Fantastic Forum. Letters are published from Mike LaValle, Grant Shaffer, John Yeara, Duane J. Robertson, and Andrew Vogt. | Trivia = | Recommended = | Links = }}